Demon's Curse (Imnada Brotherhood)
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Authors: Alexa Egan
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Contents
For the boys
Acknowledgments
It takes a village to raise a child and it takes a group of skilled, dedicated, and very helpful people to publish a book. It starts with my always amazing super critique duo, Do Leonard and Maggie Scheck, whose laughter, inspiration, hard work, and friendship I’ve come to rely on more than I can say. Kevan Lyon is always there with large doses of answers, suggestions, and reassurance. Emilia Pisani has championed this project from idea to finished product, and the fantastic crew at Pocket Books has been amazing in bringing my vision to life. And of course, I have to mention my wonderful family, who never fails to keep me on my toes and make life interesting. Thank you!
Prologue
NEAR CHARLEROI, BELGIUM
JUNE 6, 1815
They had not died gently. No imitation of sleep in their ripped and bloodied corpses. No quiet repose in their twisted limbs and staring eyes.
Mac had counted three already: two in the muddy farmyard, and another by the garden fence. As he stepped onto the house’s porch, a figure threw himself out the door, knocking Mac aside in his rush to escape. He’d only time to glimpse a swarthy head of hair and shirtsleeves drenched in blood before the man hurtled into the wood at the far side of the lane.
Inside, Mac stepped over a woman’s fallen body, her skirts sodden crimson, but for one edge that retained the original springtime yellow. Her hair was a wiry gray, her face, seamed with fine wrinkles like old parchment, now a ghastly white. Her eyes, wide and horrified in death.
By the hearth lay a heap of homespun skirts, one plump outstretched arm lit by a spill of light across the floor from a broken window. A maidservant, perhaps.
Bloody hell, what had happened here? Where was Adam?
Major de Coursy’s shout from the back of the house signaled the discovery of another body. “Mother of All . . . shit . . . shit . . . shit!”
Gray’s vocabulary had coarsened over the last five years. There remained barely a trace of the priggish lordling about him now. Some claimed war turned civilized men to savage beasts, and then there were those who were born that way.
Like Mac. Like them all. Gray, Adam, David.
Imnada—shapechangers and telepaths. A race of impossible origins and uncertain future.
From Lisbon, across Spain, over the rugged Pyrenees, and finally to this out-of-the-way farm on the Belgian border, the four of them had crept and sniffed, prowled and stalked, gathering what intelligence they could for king and country. Tracking the movements of Napoleon’s army. Assessing intent. Relaying attack routes. That is, until Adam’s urgent pathing brought them here. To this . . .
“I’ve found him!” Gray’s voice came again. “Come quickly!”
Mac followed the shout down a short passage to a heavy wooden door partly blocked by another crumpled body.
Within, all was shadows. Heavy drapes had been pulled across the three long windows, letting only thin bars of slanting twilight into the room. The fire in the grate had burned down to a few smoldering embers, and even the candles were little more than melted stubs, only one still flickering in its pool of wax. Books lined the walls that weren’t taken up with cabinets full of treasures and trinkets, including a macabre smiling skull. A globe sat within a mahogany stand. A map
table stood spread with charts of the continents and the heavens above. On the desk, an enormous volume lay open as if someone had recently been reading.
Mac was vaguely aware of David crowding in behind him. But his attention was all for Adam crouched naked by the hearth, his shoulders heaving with rage and panic. One hand balled into a clawed fist, the other brandishing a sword, black with blood. He bore the rough form of a human, but his hunched stance and the elongated bones of his face held traces of the lynx that was his animal aspect.
“I had to do it. They knew.”
That’s when Mac noticed the man sprawled dead at the base of the desk, his coat gaping open to reveal a vicious wound.
“I couldn’t let him live.” His words echoed in Mac’s head as a pathing.
Gray shed his scarlet coat and draped it across Adam’s bare shoulders. His voice came low and urgent. “They knew what, Adam? What did these people do to deserve death? Was it about the French? Had they learned about the emperor’s movements? About the coalition’s defenses?”
But, struggling with the shift, Adam was unable to answer. He groaned, sinking to the floor, a shimmer of magic masking his return to human form.
Mac crossed to the desk, callously stepping over the crumpled body on the floor. He’d seen too many corpses to be overly concerned by one more. Pulling the open book around toward him, he leafed through the fluttering pages for clues. “Not the French, Gray.” Mac met his major’s shocked stare. “Us. The man was Other.”
Gray’s piercing blue eyes narrowed.
Mac’s lips thinned as he continued reading. “The book’s a compendium on the Imnada.” He flipped pages, his heart sinking with every entry. “The man must have spent his entire life researching the clans.”
“For what purpose?” Gray asked, twisting his ring round and round, the great diamond winking in the dim light.
David spat his disgust. “There can be only one purpose where Fey-bloods are concerned.”
The men eyed one another, their shared thoughts equally dark. Equally fearful.
The Imnada’s continued survival depended upon keeping their race’s existence a secret. It had been thus for centuries upon centuries, ever since the Fealla Mhòr, the Great Betrayal, when the magical Fey-blood Other turned upon the Imnada with merciless ferocity, almost wiping the shapechangers from the earth. Only terrified retreat into the wild corners of the world had kept the Imnada alive. Only seclusion behind the great concealing power of the Palings guarded the few remaining pockets of their kind. All clan members knew the swift and brutal penalty befalling those careless enough to allow discovery by an out-clan.
Death if the culprit was lucky.
Exile if he or she was not.
“Shit,” Gray muttered. “Just what we don’t need this close to battle.”
“Fey
-
blood,” Adam murmured from his place on the floor. He was now fully human, but still incredibly weak. “Said he sensed the animal heart of me . . . forced the shift . . . no choice . . . had to kill . . . protect our secret . . . protect the clans . . .”
David knelt beside Adam, his gaze rage-filled. “The Fey
-
blood forced the shift against your will?”
Gray shrugged, but the tightness of his jaw hinted at his anger. “Must have. Look at him. He’s so drained he can barely move. He’d not have shifted during the waning crescent of Berenth on his own.”
Mac agreed. The Imnada’s powers derived from the goddess moon, mother to all Imnada. As she grew from the slender young crescent of Piryeth to the fullness of Silmith, so did the strength and the ease in which the Imnada accomplished the shift from man to animal and back. As she aged to the waning sliver of Berenth, so did their abilities, leaving them weakened and vulnerable. On the nights of Morderoth when the goddess fled the skies completely, the Imnada’s powers to shapechange disappeared as well, leaving them as defenseless as any human.